Curry Barker knows he’s a big deal. In Soho Hotel, I’m sat across the 25-year-old American filmmaker whose debut feature, Obsession, is on the verge of becoming this year’s Talk to Me. Two weeks earlier, Barker wrapped on Anything But Ghosts, a Blumhouse-produced horror he directed, co-wrote, and starred in alongside Aaron Paul. A few days ago, A24 announced that Barker would write and direct their forthcoming reboot of Texas Chain Saw Massacre.

Barker, then, might seem like the next Jordan Peele. However, Peele was 38 when Get Out premiered, and Barker, who wears shades indoors, already possesses the confidence of a veteran. In 2024, he wrote, directed, and starred in Milk & Serial, a 62-minute found-footage horror that cost $800. Its YouTube virality led to funding for Obsession.

“Writing [Obsession] feels like a lifetime ago,” says Barker. “Directing it feels like years ago, even if it wasn’t. My brain is creatively way past this project. But I’m still super-excited about it.” After its raucous world premiere at TIFF, Obsession sparked a bidding war between A24, Neon, and the eventual winner, Focus Features. Watching it with a crowd, it’s easy to see why: both a twisted romcom and a head-smashing horror, Barker’s movie is hilarious and far more philosophical than you might expect. Like The Drama, it questions the strength of a relationship if truths are blurred during the courtship. “I knew the potential of the premise early on, because I’m just that type of thinker,” says Barker. “I’m always thinking about the darkest version of something.”

Even before Obsession turns into a horror, it’s full of jump scares through the inability of its young protagonist, Bear (Michael Johnston), to ask out his crush – or, even worse, notice her complete disinterest. With Nikki (Inde Navarrette) on the verge of leaving her hometown, Bear has mere days to blurt out the feelings he’s been harbouring since childhood. Instead, he takes a “One Wish Willow”, a toy he purchased in a store, and asks the universe to make Nikki love him more than anyone else in the world. Chaos ensues.

Like if Smile were a romcom, Nikki becomes comically and dangerously clingy, her face exuding manic exuberance in the direction of an ordinary guy. She blocks the door when he attempts to leave for work. She screams if he turns away when they sleep. Bear soon realises that the woman in love with him isn’t Nikki, but some other entity in her body. Even so, Bear can tolerate the relationship’s toxicity – the film has its own cat version of the Fatal Attraction bunny boiler – not least because the sex turns out to be what he imagined.

The idea was inspired by watching a Halloween episode of The Simpsons where Bart is granted wishes by a monkey’s paw. “When the premise has been done before, it’s been sillier,” says Barker. “I wanted to approach it from a grounded standpoint, where you think about the real consequences and trauma.”

Barker claims not to be a “romcom guy”. Aside from praising No Hard Feelings (“that’s considered a romcom, right?”), he admits to having seen few of the classics and wonders aloud if he should watch The Notebook. Still, in the script, he described a key scene as “a total romcom moment”, and tried to steer the actors away from typical horror performances. “I told Inde not to play the demon as possessed, but to play her as a jealous girlfriend.”

It’s exciting this is happening to me at such a young age. It’s like, I must be doing something right

For the role of Bear, Barker also sought a recognisable human. “I wanted to cast someone who has this innocence to him,” the director explains. “Michael’s a very soft-spoken guy. But there’s something darker behind his eyes.” It is, indeed, a jolt – and also a punchline that drew huge laughter from the room – when Bear decides it’s worth dating Nikki, regardless of her many blood-red flags. “He says, ‘What’s so bad about her being with me?’ He’s saying the thing out loud. It’s a shocking moment.”

Barker, though, is unfamiliar with attachment theory. When I suggest that the film is about someone with anxious attachment fantasising that their avoidant crush becomes anxious as well, and that the story demonstrates why it’s rare for two people with anxious attachment to date – he nods politely, and says fans of his YouTube videos often credit him for ideas he never intended. He points to The Chair, a 24-minute short with 9 million views and a rampant comment section that he hopes to one day turn into a full-length feature.

Before directing, Barker wanted to be an actor. He had a small role on It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, and stars in nearly everything he writes and directs – notably not Obsession. It was a deliberate choice based on The Chair, the first time he was solely behind the camera. “I’m sure I could have played Bear,” he says. “I don’t know what would have happened if I had done that.”

Like Peele and Zach Cregger, Barker entered horror through sketch comedy. On YouTube, Barker and Cooper Tomlinson (he plays Bear’s best friend in Obsession) are a duo called that’s a bad idea, whose sketches include a Talk to Me parody. I bring up a recent Bob Odenkirk interview for the New York Times where he claims sketch comedy is “the most profound expression of human existence”. “That’s so accurate,” says Barker. “Every sketch we make is making fun of how humans react. Having that brain on all the time – like, being at a restaurant, and thinking of what would be funny – lends itself to horror. They’re both about psychology and studying the human condition.”

However, Barker, who edited Obsession, insists that he’s wary of horror films that are too comedic. “I’m pursuing honesty,” he says. “When you subvert expectations because people aren’t used to a horror movie doing something, that creates a laugh. The moment you pursue a laugh, you might hurt the stakes.”

Is it helpful sitting with audiences to check they’re laughing and jumping at the right moments? “It’s not something I’m worried about. It comes naturally to me.” Does he consider himself a natural filmmaker? “I definitely feel like it comes naturally to me. It all stems from storytelling.” He cites a lesson from Aaron Sorkin’s MasterClass: the final 15 minutes, according to Sorkin, are the most important part of a movie. “Do I have a naturalness for story? I guess I do. But I’ve been doing that since I was a little kid at the dinner table, telling stories.”

Barker also names the “but therefore” method from South Park (he improvises a supernatural story about a tree to prove its efficiency) and reveals that he and Tomlinson used Save the Cat!, a popular guide to screenwriting, for Anything But Ghosts. The pair have written a handful of unproduced comedies together, while Barker has an additional five scripts he’s written solo. A sixth one will be A24’s Texas Chain Saw Massacre, which he hasn’t written a word of yet. “I want to be writing it right now,” Barker says. “That’s just the way my schedule is.”

Whereas Milk & Serial was effectively shot in secret, the director will be asked endlessly about Texas Chain Saw Massacre by strangers before he even opens up Final Draft. “I just have to remind myself that I’m here for a reason, and I can’t think about the pressure.” Isn’t it also rare for a major horror auteur to be the same age as the characters they’re writing and directing? “I write towards my age group. Even Texas and Anything are my age group. It’s exciting this is happening to me at such a young age. It’s like, I must be doing something right.”

Obsession is out in cinemas on May 15.